Good dogs - Western Wanderings

Sunset, June, 2002 by Peter Fish

* SAN RAFAEL, CALIFORNIA--This leafy city north of San Francisco is not usually a scary place. Today it terrifies. I shuffle down Fourth Street on a sidewalk I cannot see. Where's the curb? Traffic thrums past, fast, close. A new sound, a car backing up: Is it backing up into me?

The sole calming force in this hostile universe walks at the other end of a harness. His name is Lad, and he is a 2 1/2-year-old Labrador retriever. My panic notwithstanding, Lad pilots me down Fourth Street at a pace that is confident and assured. Wrapped in a black foam blindfold, I am only sampling the training program Lad is part of. But he is a stellar graduate of Guide Dogs for the Blind.

"When I am with a guide dog, I am putting myself in the dog's paws," says Michael Hingson, Guide Dogs' national public affairs representative. "It's a lifelong contract and a 24-hour-a-day job."

You understand the job's complexities when you visit the organization's San Rafael headquarters. (There is also a second facility, in Boring, Oregon, near Portland.) Guide Dogs for the Blind was founded 60 years ago to aid veterans blinded in World War II. Since then, it has graduated thousands of dog and human students.

At the San Rafael campus, there are generally 300 dogs in residence, of four breeds: Labrador and golden retrievers, Lab-golden crosses, and German shepherds. Training starts at 3 days old, with puppies receiving massages to accustom them to human touch. At 8 weeks they are placed with foster families for a year's socialization. Then they return to Guide Dogs for six months' training.

As for the human students, they come from all over the United States for a monthlong course--entirely free--that runs from 6:30 A.M. to 7 P.M. six days a week. They start out, as I did, performing simple maneuvers with their dogs but quickly move on to more trying obstacles: escalators, revolving doors, airplanes. And dog and human learn to trust one another.

Only 1 percent of the visually impaired people in the United States employ guide dogs. But for them, the dog can make the difference between a diminished life and a full one. Fourteen years ago, Aerial Gilbert--now Guide Dogs' director of volunteers--was blinded in an accident. "It took me six months of staying at home afraid of everything," she says. "Then I asked myself, What would it take for my life to be okay? The answer was independence." That came from her first guide dog, a Labrador retriever named Webster. "It was a revelation. I thought, I can handle this."

Today, Gilbert's companion is a German shepherd, Deanne: They stride across the San Rafael campus at a speed that is hard for sighted people to match. Like the other dogs you meet here, Deanne is so stalwart and appealing you struggle not to sentimentalize her. As Michael Hingson cautions: "The relationship is close. But it is a working relationship."

Still. Last September 11 Hingson was hosting a meeting at One World Trade Center. When the first plane hit, he and his yellow Lab, Roselle, walked down 78 floors to eventual safety. "She did fine," Hingson says of Roselle. "She focused and did exactly what she was supposed to do."

For a moment, it may be acceptable to give in to your sappy feelings about these dogs, who inexplicably want to be with us and make us whole. When I pull off my blindfold, I look at Lad and admire traits his eventual partner will likely never see: the handsome face, the licorice coat. But I also admire traits that his partner will come to know far better than me: the intelligence, the watchfulness, the care. "Good Lad," I say, reaching down to ruffle his fur. "That's a very good boy"

Guide Dogs for the Blind 60th Anniversary Open House runs June 28-29 in San Rafael (415/499-4000) and June 21-22 in Boring (503/668-2100). Visit www.guidedogs.com for more information.